It was 30 years ago on July 28, 1988 that hikers and historians in North Jersey suffered a great loss. After more than 80 years of being a favorite destination for people who liked to wander along trails in the woods and a topic of interest for those looking into the past, the sentinel that watched over the Clinton Valley, Hanks Pond and Clinton Reservoir was suddenly reduced to a pile of rubble and carted away.

Gone forever is the once magnificent castle built in Newfoundland in 1907 that was a showplace and the country home of Richard James Cross.

His estate consisted of 365 acres of wooded glens, fields, and farm lands, along with a 77-acre pristine water body known as Hank’s Pond, known for a long time as a choice destination for local fishermen.

The boat house, tennis courts, guest cottage, ice house, carriage house, farm house and the horse and cattle barns are no longer there. The carriage shop and horse stables were destroyed by fire in 1940. Nature has reclaimed all of the land where the castle, fields, gardens and orchards once were.

Only memories and stories remain at the now deserted and uninhabited site.

The castle, named Bearfort House by Cross, was better known locally as Cross Castle.

Native stone was used to build the citadel. Some of it was blasted from the ledge to form a cellar under the entire building. The remainder was quarried from the area. The stone, grey to pink in color, was hand cut by local stone masons – a crew that may have included members of the Sanders family who were known locally for their talent and expertise in that craft.

Most of the other workers engaged in the construction were also natives to the area, the late local historian Leslie Post found in his study of the Cross family and their time in this section of the Township of West Milford.

The late Thomas Post, employed by the Cross Estate, told Post that 12 men had year-round jobs to chop wood for heating the 40-room castle. Each room had its own separate fireplace. There was also a system of indirect hot water heat.

Walter Card, also deceased, was one of the local workers who helped build the castle. He told a reporter that local stone was carted to the building site in carts pulled by oxen. Other Card family members are believed to also have been part of the construction work crew.

The castle was located on a rock ledge. Its main rectangular section faced south. Two wings on the three-story building formed a courtyard that was open to the north.

Two large porches and a wide veranda provided a view over two lakes along with a view down the Berkshire and Longwood Valleys into Jefferson Township and southward, showcasing miles of nature’s beauty. The castle was positioned to provide breath-taking views from each of its large windows.

There was hot and cold running water available throughout the castle. Spring water from a 25,000 gallon stone storage tower was piped into it and other buildings on the estate and also to its gardens. The entire compound had its own private gas plant for lighting.

Cross is said to have had his own personal staff of bakers who worked in a bakery area built into a hill after blasting for stone for the castle was done there.

Estimated cost to build the elegant dwelling at the time it was constructed was about $1,500,000. It would of course take many more millions of dollars to duplicate it in today’s world. Post noted in his study that it was unknown as to how many men, horses, oxen and wagons were needed to transform a mountain wilderness into a magnificent estate – or how long they must have labored without the benefit of modern machinery.

It is unknown how long it took to build the magnificent showplace or how many workers it took to create it, but it certainly was much longer than the one day it took to demolish the castle in 1988 after the place was purchased by the City of Newark to become part of its watershed holdings. A local contractor was hired by the city to take down the building.

People who traveled abroad used to say the huge stone walls reminded them of Old England – or of the stone fortresses along the Rhine, said Post.

Cross died in March 1917, just two years after his castle was built. The family moved to Princeton and in 1919 sold the estate to the City of Newark for just $155,000. It became part of the Pequannock Watershed – providing water to millions of people in the state.

Observers at the time said Newark workers stripped the castle of everything that could be sold, including the roof, stairwells, floors and door knobs. Some of the materials were purchased by local builders for homes they were building in the area. For instance, the castle’s slate roof was acquired for a house being constructed on LaRue Road and the staircase and post were used for a home under construction in Milton.

All that was left of the structure on the day it was scheduled to be demolished were the high remaining walls of the 365-acre estate. My memories of the estate as a young child, walking there with my parents on an early spring day as many area families did, are not so much of the Castle and its remaining high walls, but of the seemingly hundreds of yellow daffodils that lined the road to the property.

In the 1950s youths started to hang out at the castle remains. Drinking and drug use there was becoming a community problem and a liability for the new owner. Spray painted graffiti walls and broken glass became part of the once majestic scene. People were taking rocks from the structure as souvenirs up until the time that watershed authorities declared the structure unsafe and a liability and made the decision to demolish it.

Township of West Milford officials were not happy when they heard about the castle being torn down – but when they became aware of what was happening it was too late to stop the demolition.

Former West Milford Councilwoman Dawn Sharkey said in 1988 that people concerned with preservation of the township’s history contacted her and asked that officials see that other historic buildings such as Idylease did not meet the same fate as the Cross castle.

(Idylease continues to be preserved by Richard Zampella today as a residential hotel.)

The late Mayor Stewart Perry said he agreed with Sharkey 100 percent and also thought that historic buildings should not be demolished. However, recognition of the archival value of the Cross castle came too late. The property and all that was located on it could not be spared from the wrecking equipment that arrived to do its work. Nature soon reclaimed the site with rapid wild plant growth and it was quickly on the way back to being like it was in when Cross first discovered it.

Cross, master of the castle, was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England - United Kingdom on Nov. 3, 1845. He was the son of William and Anna Chalmers (Wood) Cross. After graduating from Marlborough College in England, Cross decided to seek his fortune in America. First, after arriving here, he settled in New Orleans. Soon afterward he moved to New York, where he later married Matilda Redmond on June 3, 1872. After Matilda died, Cross married her sister Annie Redmond on May 16, 1885.

Cross was the father of six children: William Redmond Cross, Eleanor Marquand, John Walter Cross, Eliot Buchanan Cross, Mary R. Cross, and Emily Redmond Cross.

In 1875 Cross became a member of the banking firm of Morton, Bliss and Company of New York City. He retired in 1899 but kept active during his retirement by continuing as director of the Manhattan Trust Company and as a Trustee of U.S. Doyds, the Palatine Insurance Company, Atlas Insurance and others.

Historical writer Jennie Vander Stad Sweetman in her research discovered that the Cross family took an active part in Newfoundland activities. In her research she found that records dated to 1905 show that W. Redmond Cross was vice-president of the Newfoundland Improvement Society. Serving as chairman of the standing committees were Mrs. R.J. Cross, education, and W. Redmond Cross, railroad service. Members of the Society included R.J. Cross, Mrs. R.J. Cross, W. Redmond Cross, Miss M. R. Cross and Miss E. R. Cross.

Sweetman also reported that R. J. Cross was a member of the North Jersey Poultry Association. She said the late Maybelle Post Donegan recalled the Cross family taking her to services at the Newfoundland Baptist Church on Sunday mornings. She also reported that the late Mrs. C. Newman told her that the Crosses were the main officials in the Newfoundland Public Library and read all the books before they were approved for placement on the shelves.

Sweetman also said that Walter Palmer of Newfoundland remembered that the Cross women were the first in the area to go without hats and also were the first to have a horseless carriage.

In the 1970s Ron Kromer, a reporter for the Paterson Evening News, wrote a column called “The View from Cross’s Castle” in which he covered a multitude of subjects, including politics in the upper Passaic County area.

The castle never was never given a state or federal historic designation, despite the fact it was once a significant building in the Township of West Milford and also part of North Jersey history.